# Telegram Channel Monitor - Keyword Alerts, No API Key or Login (`mavilinklabs/telegram-channel-monitor`) Actor

Monitor public Telegram channels with zero setup - no API key, no phone, no login. Get keyword alerts, track only new posts on a schedule, and extract messages, views, dates, links & subscriber counts as clean JSON. Set & forget monitoring pipeline, just $0.005 per channel. Start in 30 seconds.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/mavilinklabs/telegram-channel-monitor.md
- **Developed by:** [MaviLinkLabs](https://apify.com/mavilinklabs) (community)
- **Categories:** Social media, Automation
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $5.00 / 1,000 channel processeds

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Telegram Channel Monitor — Messages, Views & Keyword Alerts

Scrape and monitor **public Telegram channels** — no Telegram API key, no login, no phone number.

Give it channel usernames, get clean structured JSON: messages with text, dates, view counts, links and media flags, plus channel subscriber counts. Add keywords to filter, enable incremental mode and put it on a schedule to build a **Telegram monitoring & alerting pipeline** in minutes.

### Why this Actor?

- ✅ **No Telegram API credentials** — works with public channel previews, zero setup
- ✅ **Keyword filtering** — only get messages that mention your brand, token, product or topic
- ✅ **Incremental monitoring** — `onlyNewMessages` remembers where it stopped; each scheduled run returns only what's new
- ✅ **Channel stats included** — subscriber counts and channel metadata with every run
- ✅ **Fair pay-per-result billing** — a channel is only charged when it delivers messages after your filters; empty checks on a schedule cost you nothing

### Use cases

- **Brand & reputation monitoring** — know when your product, company or founder is mentioned
- **Crypto / market intelligence** — track announcement channels and signal groups (public ones)
- **OSINT & research** — archive messages with views, dates and links as structured data
- **Competitor watching** — follow competitors' announcement channels automatically
- **News aggregation** — feed fresh posts from niche channels into your own pipeline or AI agent

### Input

```json
{
    "channels": ["durov", "telegram"],
    "maxMessagesPerChannel": 50,
    "keywords": ["launch", "update"],
    "onlyNewMessages": true,
    "includeChannelInfo": true
}
```

- `channels` — usernames or `t.me/...` links of **public** channels
- `maxMessagesPerChannel` — up to 1000 recent messages per channel
- `keywords` — optional case-insensitive filter; leave empty to get everything
- `onlyNewMessages` — incremental mode for scheduled monitoring
- `includeChannelInfo` — adds one summary item per channel (title, description, subscribers)

### Output

One dataset item per message:

```json
{
    "type": "message",
    "channel": "durov",
    "id": 538,
    "url": "https://t.me/durov/538",
    "date": "2026-08-04T10:12:00+00:00",
    "text": "Last night, Apple briefly removed Telegram from the App Store...",
    "views": 1380000,
    "isForwarded": false,
    "forwardedFrom": null,
    "hasPhoto": false,
    "hasVideo": false,
    "hasDocument": false,
    "links": []
}
```

Plus one channel info item per channel:

```json
{
    "type": "channel-info",
    "channel": "durov",
    "title": "Pavel Durov",
    "subscribers": 11300000,
    "description": "Thoughts from the Telegram founder"
}
```

Private channels, bots and user accounts have no public preview — the Actor reports them clearly as `channel-error` items instead of failing the whole run.

### Build a monitoring pipeline in 3 steps

1. Set your channels + keywords, enable `onlyNewMessages`
2. Create an [Apify Schedule](https://docs.apify.com/platform/schedules) (e.g. every 30 minutes)
3. Connect a [webhook or integration](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations) (Slack, email, Make, Zapier, or your own endpoint) to get alerted on new matching messages

### FAQ

**Does it work with private channels or groups?** No — only channels with a public preview (t.me/s/...). This keeps the Actor login-free and reliable.

**Do I need a Telegram account or API key?** No. Nothing to configure.

**How fresh is the data?** Messages are scraped live at run time, including view counts at that moment.

# Actor input Schema

## `channels` (type: `array`):

Public Telegram channel usernames or t.me links (e.g. "durov" or "https://t.me/durov"). Private channels cannot be scraped.

## `maxMessagesPerChannel` (type: `integer`):

How many recent messages to collect per channel.

## `keywords` (type: `array`):

If set, only messages containing at least one of these keywords (case-insensitive) are saved. Perfect for brand/topic monitoring and alerts.

## `onlyNewMessages` (type: `boolean`):

Remember the last seen message per channel and only return newer messages on the next run. Combine with an Apify Schedule to build a monitoring/alerting pipeline.

## `includeChannelInfo` (type: `boolean`):

Push one extra dataset item per channel with title, description and subscriber count.

## `proxyConfiguration` (type: `object`):

Proxy settings for the requests to t.me.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "channels": [
    "durov",
    "telegram"
  ],
  "maxMessagesPerChannel": 50,
  "onlyNewMessages": false,
  "includeChannelInfo": true,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}
```

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "channels": [
        "durov",
        "telegram"
    ],
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true
    }
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("mavilinklabs/telegram-channel-monitor").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "channels": [
        "durov",
        "telegram",
    ],
    "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": True },
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("mavilinklabs/telegram-channel-monitor").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print("💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/" + run["defaultDatasetId"])
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "channels": [
    "durov",
    "telegram"
  ],
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}' |
apify call mavilinklabs/telegram-channel-monitor --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "mcp-remote",
                "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=mavilinklabs/telegram-channel-monitor",
                "--header",
                "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_API_TOKEN>"
            ]
        }
    }
}

```

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/jcJ6Y4QgwmUURlHDK/builds/cqvGoOpjp9w1sDBT9/openapi.json